Merit list for MBBS seats kicks up row

7/18/2017

The release of the merit list to make admissions for about 2,300 MBBS and BDS seats in eight medical and 16 dental colleges in the state today stirred a controversy after many aspirants and their parents gathered at the Baba Farid University of Health Sciences (BFUHS), alleging tampering in the earlier merit list.

On June 29, the BFUHS had released the merit list of all candidates who had appeared from Punjab in NEET-2017. The medical university had released this list to help students to see their relative position among candidates because in the NEET-2017 results declared by the CBSE on June 23, there was no provision to see the state merit list.

Today, after the BFUHS released a new merit list of all applicants for the MBBS and the BDS seats in the state before starting online counselling, it led to a controversy as the new merit list did not match the June 29 list.

Clarifying the changes in the new merit list, the BFUHS authorities claimed that the earlier list was only of candidates who qualified NEET and had opted for Punjab as their appearing state in the exam.

However, now at the time of making admissions for MBBS and BDS seats on the basis of merit, the university is also considering the merit of eligible NEET candidates from other states.

“Besides many exempted categories of the students who are eligible for seats in Punjab but living in other states, the BFUHS has now included the name of all those candidates in the merit list who have attained high merit and applied for Sikh and Christian minority quota seats in Sri Guru Ram Das Medical College, Amritsar, and Christian Medical College, Ludhiana,” said Dr Arvind Sharma, registrar BFUHS.

As the state government has relaxed the eligibility criterion, most of its BDS seats in 16 dental colleges in the state and the vacant BDS seats would be filled from NEET-qualified candidates from any other part of the country. “Now, a large number of candidates who don’t belong to Punjab have also found place in the merit list for the BDS seats,” said the registrar.